Tag: Morgan Tsvangirai

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, after enduring a great deal of hardship on the long road to his current position of sharing power with President Robert Mugabe, was injured and his wife of 31 years was killed in a car accident that occurred Friday when they were on their way to their home outside Harare.

The ever-unfolding democratic drama in Zimbabwe has revealed a new, potentially less contentious chapter. Opposition leader and once-exiled politician Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will join a government as prime minister with President Robert Mugabe in a power-sharing agreement between the two rival parties.

If there was ever any doubt that Zimbabwe’s longtime proto-dictator, President Robert Mugabe, wouldn’t exactly take to anything resembling a “power-sharing arrangement,” that doubt has vanished along with the hope that Mugabe would actually work with his political rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.

The already confusing and highly charged situation in Zimbabwe has become more tense since Sept. 15, when President Robert Mugabe agreed to share power with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who was to assume the position of Zimbabwe’s prime minister.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, pictured, was still ensconced in a Harare hotel with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday in an attempt to work out some kind of power-sharing arrangement with his rival for the presidency in this year’s protracted and controversial election process. But after a weekend of intense talks, nobody had signed on any dotted lines.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has fought tooth and nail to maintain his position of power during the three months since his authority was threatened by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, widely recognized (but not by Mugabe) as the winner of last March’s election, and now it looks like all that hard work and abject brutality has paid off.

After months of strife and bloodshed, the presidential runoff in Zimbabwe finally became a reality Friday; however, it hardly seems like an election, considering there’s only one candidate: long-time President Robert Mugabe.

Whatever else might be said about Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, it’s definitely fair to say that the man is tenacious. After weeks of confusion following his bid to oust longtime leader Robert Mugabe from the presidency, Tsvangirai says he’s now gearing up for an electoral rematch.

Results from Saturday’s watershed elections in Zimbabwe are still being tallied and analyzed, and while the country anxiously awaits the outcome, some are wondering whether the delay is due to careful counting methods or more troubling potential causes. Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe is losing his grip on power or ready to claim victory—depending on which of Monday’s conflicting reports you read.